How to Find Federal Contract Incumbents, Award History, and Pricing

To find out who won a federal contract, how much the government paid for it, and when it might come up again, you'll want to work backward through three free official platforms: SAM.gov, USAspending.gov, and GAO.gov.

1. SAM.gov:
   1. Search closed solicitations via Contract Opportunities
   2. Search award records via Contract Awards
2. USAspending.gov: Search values and delivery orders
3. GAO.gov bid protest decisions: Search bid protest decisions for information like evaluated prices

Knowing where to search, how to filter, and what to click on next is the key to researching federal contract incumbents, award history, and pricing information. We'll walk you through specific filters and click sequences that'll help you find what you're looking for.

(And yes: this how-to walk-through will generally work for any NAICS code and agency.)

By the end of this guide, you should be able to trace your award data research to the contract it replaced, the company that held that contract, what the government paid, and the rate sheet bidders had to fill in.

What Do You Need Before You Start?

Almost every platform filters on two classification codes: the NAICS and the PSC. Getting these classifications right can make or break your research.

• NAICS — the North American Industry Classification System, maintained by the Census Bureau. It describes the industry the work sits in. The current revision is 2022 NAICS.
• PSC — the Product and Service Code, published in the PSC Manual on Acquisition.gov. It describes what the government is actually buying.

For services work, PSC is usually the sharper filter. A single NAICS code can sprawl across many unrelated requirements, while a four-character PSC often maps almost one-to-one onto the thing you do. The strongest searches use both.

How to find yours: open any award or solicitation you know is in your lane and read the codes off the record. Both SAM.gov notices and USAspending award pages display NAICS and PSC with their full descriptions. One good record gives you the code pair you will reuse in every search below.

Generalizing: if your work spans several lines of business, build one code pair per line rather than one search that tries to cover everything. A company doing trucking and warehousing, for example, should be running at least two searches, not one, because the recompete calendars behind them are completely separate.

Step 1: Find closed solicitations in SAM.gov Contract Opportunities

SAM.gov Contract Opportunities holds solicitation notices, including expired ones.

1. Go to sam.gov/search, then find the row of tabs at the top of the results area. Select Contracting > Contract Opportunities. Your choices there are Contracting, Contract Opportunities, Contract Awards, Subcontract Reports, Subcontracting Plan Reports, and Other Transactions.
2. In the Filter By panel, open Status and check Inactive. SAM.gov defaults to Active only, which is why history searches come back empty. Check both boxes if you want current and closed notices together.
3. Open Product or Service Information and enter your NAICS Code and Product and Service Code.
4. Open Federal Organizations and add the department, sub-tier, or office.
5. Open Dates to find Response/Date Offers Due and Updated Date. Set a multi-year custom range. Additional date filter options are available by clicking More Filters at the bottom-left corner of the filter panel.

The SAM.gov Search Panel, Explained

In the Filter By panel, the sections appear in this order:

1. Keyword Search — two tabs. Simple Search offers Any Words, All Words (the default), and Exact Phrase. Search Editor takes Boolean logic.
2. Federal Organizations — a type-ahead for department, sub-tier or office, with an open advanced control.
3. Dates — four sub-fields: Response/Date Offers Due, Published Date, Updated Date and Inactive Date. Each takes a preset range or a custom From/To. Set a multi-year custom range here.
4. Notice Type — a type-ahead, not a checkbox list. Type to reveal nine options: Special Notice, Sources Sought, Presolicitation, Consolidate/(Substantially) Bundle, Solicitation, Combined Synopsis/Solicitation, Award Notice, Justification, Sale of Surplus Property.
5. Product or Service Information — the fields are NAICS Code and Product and Service Code. Add your codes here if you have them.
6. Set Aside — a type-ahead for small business, 8(a), HUBZone, SDVOSB, WOSB and the rest. If set-asides are your route in, our guide to minority-, women- and veteran-owned set-aside contracts covers which certifications unlock which filters.
7. Place of Performance — Zip Code, State / Territory, Administrative Area / Region, Country.
8. Contract Awardee — Contractor Awarded Name, Entity Name, Unique Entity ID, Zip Code, State / Province.
9. Status — Check Inactive to filter for closed solicitations.

One more control worth knowing: More Filters, at the bottom-left of the panel, opens a modal that chooses which filter sections appear rather than adding criteria inline. Four sections are hidden by default — Authority, Contract Award Details (including Contract Award Dollar Amount, Contract Award Number and Task / Delivery Order Number), Contract Office Details and Initiative. Tick what you want, then press Update.

Searching by solicitation number

If you already have a solicitation number, you can skip the above. Instead, simply paste the solicitation number straight into the keyword box.

Solicitation numbers are distinctive enough that they almost always return exactly one record.

One habit worth forming: try the number both with and without its dashes. Agencies punctuate inconsistently across systems. Notices littered with dashes in SAM.gov may lack those dashes in their own amendment documents.

What a closed notice actually gives you

A SAM.gov notice page contains:

• A version history dropdown at the top listing every amendment with its timestamp. You can open any prior version.
• Full classification: PSC, NAICS, set-aside, place of performance.
• Inactive Date and Inactive Policy — tells you how long you have to grab documents before a notice ages out of the active view.
• The complete description and amendment log.
• Contact information for the contracting officer (name, emails, and phone numbers).
• An Attachments/Links table with every posted document, its file size, an Access column marking each one Public or restricted, and a Download All button.

That attachments table is a very underrated pricing resource in federal contracting, and Step 7 comes back to it. The Schedule of Rates is the blank pricing instrument every bidder had to complete. The Synopsis of Award identifies who won and under what contract number, which is your key into the award databases in the next two steps.

If reading closed notices is new to you as a research habit rather than a bidding activity, our guide on using past bids to inform future proposals covers what to extract from them beyond pricing.

Step 2: How Do You Search Federal Contract Awards in SAM.gov?

Contract Opportunities tells you what the government asked for. Contract Awards tells you what it actually bought. It is the system of record: every award, every modification, every delivery order, reported by the contracting office itself.

1. Go to sam.gov/contract-data, or from any SAM.gov page, choose Search and set the domain selector to Contract Awards.
2. Sign in. You will need to sign in. A free SAM.gov account through Login.gov is enough (you don't need a registered entity or any special role). Results won't appear if you're signed out.

The Contract Awards filter panel differs from the Opportunities one. Its sections, in order:

• Keyword Search — Simple Search and Search Editor, as above.
• Federal Organizations — with separate Contracting and Funding fields.
• Awardee — Legal Business Name, Unique Entity ID, CAGE / NCAGE.
• Socio-Economic Status
• Product or Service Information — NAICS Code and Product and Service Code.
• Place of Performance — Zip Code, State / Territory, Administrative Area / Region, City, Congressional District, Country.
• Contract Identification — Contract ID (PIID), Reason For Modification, Referenced IDV (PIID), Solicitation ID, Document Type.
• Dates — Date Signed, IDV Last Date To Order, Contract Fiscal Year.
• Dollars — Dollars Obligated and Ultimate Contract Value, each with a Min and Max.
• Competition — Extent Competed, Type of Set Aside, Contract Opportunity Notice, Contracting Officer’s Business Size Determination.
• Status — Active and Inactive/Closed.

Wildcard Search

A filtered wildcard search on a six-character prefix can map an entire contracting office’s buying history in your lane. (Legacy contract numbers predating the current numbering scheme may not conform.)

That's because federal contract numbers are structured rather than random:

Under FAR 4.1603, “The first six positions identify the department/agency and office issuing the instrument. Use the AAC assigned to the issuing office for positions 1 through 6.”

According to SAM.gov, three fields accept partial and wildcard searches: PIID, Referenced IDV PIID, and Solicitation ID. (E.g.: "W58, GS*89.”)

Reports and bulk data

Manually clicking through each record one at a time is fine for reviewing a small handful of records. While no one is stopping you from building a large database that way, the far more reasonable alternative is to bulk sort and filter your reports.

To build a database, use the Data Bank link in the SAM.gov top navigation.

• Standard Reports: pre-formatted, ready to run.
• Ad Hoc Reports: build your own from the available attributes and metrics. You can save a report, edit it later, share it, and add a total row.
• Administrative Reports: controlled access, mostly for federal users.

Clicking through records one at a time is fine for a handful. To build a database, use the Data Bank — the third item in the SAM.gov top navigation, at sam.gov/reports/awards/standard. Report types are Static, Standard, Administrative and Ad Hoc. Ad Hoc reports let you build your own from the available attributes and metrics, save the report, edit it later, share it and add a total row. As SAM.gov notes, “You must be signed in to run most reports, and roles assigned to you determine which reports are available for you to run” — Administrative reports are largely for federal users.

Step 3: How Do You Pull Values, Delivery Orders, and Modifications From USAspending.gov?

USAspending.gov is the Treasury’s public spending site, and it carries the same procurement data as SAM.gov Contract Awards with no account required.

Award data on USAspending starts at fiscal year 2001, but Advanced Search only reaches back to fiscal year 2008.

Two ways in

Keyword searches are for basic keyword searches; use an advanced search to pick from multiple filters.

• Keyword Search: Type a term and you get a Spending By Transaction table split into Contracts, Contract IDVs, Grants, Direct Payments, Loans and Other. Columns include Award ID, Recipient Name, Action Date, Transaction Amount, Awarding Agency, Awarding Sub Agency and Award Type. Note that there isn't a match to solicitation numbers; you'll need to read those off an award page’s Competition Details instead.

• Advanced Search: Filter by Keyword, Recipient, Award ID, Time Period (fiscal years or custom dates, with a Show New Awards Only checkbox), Location, Agency, Award Type, Recipient Type, Award Description, Award Amount, Assistance Listing, North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), Disaster Emergency Fund Code (DEFC), Treasury Account Symbol (TAS), Product and Service Code (PSC), Type of Contract Pricing, Type of Set Aside, and Extent Competed.

Set your PSC and NAICS, add the awarding agency, add place of performance, set the time period, and submit.

Reading an award page: the dollar figures

A contract award page shows four amounts in the Award Amounts block:

• Obligated Amount — money legally committed to the contract so far.
• Current Award Amount: per the USAspending glossary, “the total amount obligated to date on a contract, including the base and exercised options.”
• Potential Award Amount: per the glossary, “the total amount that could be obligated on a contract, if the base and all options are exercised.” This is the number people quote when they say a contract is “worth” X.
• Outlayed Amount: money actually paid out.

On an IDV page, these labels change to Obligated Amounts, Current Award Amounts, Potential Award Amounts and Outlayed Amounts:

An award page also gives you Period Of Performance (start, current end, potential end), the full NAICS and PSC hierarchies, an IDV Activity chart, and an expandable Additional Information section. Under Additional Information, Competition Details is the subsection that matters most. It carries Solicitation ID, Solicitation Procedures, Number of Offers Received, Extent Competed and Set-Aside Type, among others.

Use a Solicitation ID to be linked back from an award record to the SAM.gov solicitation notice and its public attachments.

Delivery orders and modifications

Task and delivery orders sit underneath a parent contract vehicle called an IDV — an Indefinite Delivery Vehicle. USAspending’s glossary lists the types as Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA), Basic Ordering Agreement (BOA), Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC), Multi-Agency Contract, Indefinite Delivery Contract (IDC) and Federal Supply Schedule (FSS). IDIQ appears as a subtype of Indefinite Delivery Contract rather than a top-level category.

• On an order page, look for Related Awards → Parent Award Unique Key to jump up to the vehicle.
• On an IDV page, look for Orders Made Under this IDV, with its Child Award Orders, Child IDV Orders and Grandchild Award Orders tabs. It lists every child order with Award ID, awarding agency, award type, obligated amount, start date, end date and base transaction description.
• Award History → Transaction History lists every modification with its Modification Number, Action Date, Amount and Action Type — for example “G: EXERCISE AN OPTION.” On an IDV page this section is titled Award History for this IDV.

If the solicitation you are looking at was a recompete, something came before it; USAspending can show you what that was. Within four clicks you can have the incumbent, the value, the order pattern, the competitive field and the solicitation number that produced it.

Paste that solicitation number back into SAM.gov Contract Opportunities and you will often find the attachments, including a Schedule of Rates.

Should You Use SAM.gov or USAspending.gov?

Both carry the same underlying procurement data. The practical division:

• SAM.gov Contract Awards is the system of record. Use it for wildcard identifier searches, for the freshest data, and for ad hoc reporting.
• USAspending.gov is the better reading experience: no account, a cleaner award page, and the parent-and-child order tree laid out in one view. Use it for tracing and browsing.

Here's what we recommend: browse and read in USAspending, then pull and report in SAM.gov Contract Awards.

(And if you would rather not run three systems by hand every week, Bid Banana’s award data search puts the winner, the amount and the contract term alongside the open and closed bids in one place.)

Step 4: How Do You Search DLA Solicitations and Awards in DIBBS?

The DLA Internet Bid Board System (DIBBS) is where the Defense Logistics Agency posts its simplified-acquisition buys. You will clear a Department of Defense Notice and Consent Banner on arrival (just click OK) and then the search functions are public.

An account is needed to submit quotes, to reach the restricted portions of the site, and to register email addresses for solicitation and award notifications.

Set expectations first

DIBBS is built around National Stock Numbers for DLA’s supply chain. That means DIBBS is built around items, not services.

DLA’s own guidance routes most services and larger buys to SAM.gov instead — the DLA Small Business Getting Started page tells vendors to search SAM.gov by DLA’s DoDAACs.

It is a live bid board, not an archive. DLA publishes a document retention policy, and it is short:

DLA’s own advice follows from that: save what you need when you see it. Once a record leaves DIBBS, the help desk cannot retrieve it for you — you are referred to the contract administrator or the DLA FOIA office. For anything older, go to SAM.gov Contract Awards or USAspending.

The Awards search

Go to dibbs.bsm.dla.mil/Awards, or choose Awards in the top menu. The page is labeled “Search the DLA Public Awards Database.”

1. Pick one Search Category: Awardee CAGE, Award/Basic Number, Delivery Order, Award Basic Delivery Order Counter, Solicitation, Purchase Request (PR), NSN/Part Number, or Nomenclature.
2. Read the rules that appear near the value box. They change with the category and tell you the minimum and maximum length, acceptable characters, and whether wildcards are permitted. Awardee CAGE, for instance, is exactly five characters with no wildcards — but comma-separated multiples are allowed, up to 2800 characters total.
3. Set Scope: Posted Today, Past 15 Days, All, Posted for Date Range, or Awarded for Date Range.
4. Set Sorted by — any of the eight search categories — and run it.

Results include the Award/Basic Number, Delivery Order Number, Delivery Order Counter, Last Mod Posting Date, Awardee CAGE Code, and Total Contract Price, among others.

The Award/Basic Number and Delivery Order Number are hyperlinked to the award document — unless modifications or attachments are present, in which case they link to an Award Record page listing all of them. Those award PDFs are where line-item unit prices and quantities live. That is genuine unit-level pricing, published openly: the one place in this guide where you get it without a protest decision or a FOIA request.

There are also two date-browse views, Awards by Award Date and Awards by Post Date, though date browsing is limited to roughly the past 45 days.

Solicitations and technical data

• RFQ area: searchable by NSN, FSC, solicitation number, PR number, nomenclature, approved part number and approved OEM CAGE, with filters for items carrying tech docs or bidsets.
• RFP / IFB area: the larger buys.
• Tech Data: DLA completed its move from cFolders to Technical Data Management Transformation (TDMT) on June 22, 2026. TDMT now holds the BidSets and Engineering Data Lists for DLA procurements, and cFolders is gone (check the DIBBS Notices page for current guidance).

Restricted technical data needs more than an account. Export-controlled data requires Joint Certification Program (JCP) certification via a DD Form 2345, plus an active DLA Enhanced Validation certificate — and DLA will not delay an award while an ineligible offeror applies for one.

Foreign secure data and licensing-agreement data each have their own separate forms. In TDMT, the marker to look for is “Add’l Access Required” in the Download column.

Step 5: Where Should You Search Based on What You Already Know?

Most research does not start from a blank search form. It starts from one thing you already know — a code, a number, a company name — and the fastest route depends on which thing that is. This table is the shortcut.

Three habits that make identifier searches work

1. Try the number with and without punctuation. Punctuation is inconsistent between SAM.gov notices, attachment file names and award records.
2. Use the structure of the number. The first six positions of a federal contract number identify the department, agency and issuing office. A wildcard search on that prefix, plus your PSC, maps an entire office’s buying history in your lane.
3. Treat Solicitation ID as the bridge. It is the one field that appears in both the opportunity record and the award record, and it is how you get from “who won” back to “what they had to price.”

Step 6: How Do You Identify Predecessor Contracts and Incumbents?

No single field in any federal system says “incumbent.” You have to triangulate. Here are seven methods, roughly in order of speed.

1. Work backward from period of performance. In USAspending, filter by PSC plus agency plus place of performance, then read the Period Of Performance end dates. A requirement ending in 14 months is a recompete forming now, and the current holder is your incumbent.
2. Follow the Solicitation ID. Every USAspending award page carries it in Competition Details. Paste it into SAM.gov and you have the original notice, its attachments and its amendment history.
3. Read sources sought and presolicitation notices. These frequently name the predecessor contract number outright, cite historical workload volumes only the incumbent could have generated, or ask respondents to describe transition from the current provider. Worth knowing: “sources sought” is a SAM.gov notice label rather than a defined FAR term. FAR 15.201 lists the actual techniques — presolicitation notices, draft RFPs and requests for information — and defines an RFI as a tool used “when the Government does not presently intend to award a contract, but wants to obtain price, delivery, other market information, or capabilities for planning purposes.”
4. Filter SAM.gov to Award Notices. Under FAR 5.301, awards exceeding $25,000 must be synopsized if they are covered by the WTO Government Procurement Agreement or a Free Trade Agreement, or are likely to result in subcontracts. For the trade-agreement category the synopsis must be published “not later than 60 days after award.” Set Notice Type to Award Notice and add your codes. Be aware of the exceptions — orders under FAR subparts 8.4 or 16.5, actions at or below the simplified acquisition threshold, perishable subsistence, single-source utilities and others are excluded.
5. Read Justification and Approval documents. A sole-source J&A explains in writing why only one company can do the work — which means it names that company. Per FAR 6.305, a justification “shall be made publicly available within 14 days after contract award” (30 days for unusual and compelling urgency) on both SAM.gov and the agency’s own website, and “must remain posted for a minimum of 30 days.” Because the SAM.gov posting ages off, check the agency site for older ones — and expect redactions, since contracting officers must screen out proprietary data first.
6. Search GAO bid protest decisions. The most underused source in federal market research. GAO’s bid protest search page offers both “Search All Published Bid Protest Decisions” and “Search the Bid Protest Docket,” the latter covering protests filed in the past 12 months and updated daily. Decisions routinely name the solicitation number, the agency, the incumbent and the awardee — and often the actual evaluated prices. Two caveats: prices are frequently redacted, and GAO does not publish most dismissals or corrective-action cases.
7. Read the daily contract announcements. Large defense awards are announced each business day at 5 p.m. Washington time at war.gov/News/Contracts (defense.gov redirects there). Each entry names the contractor, contract number, value, completion date, work description and contracting activity. Crucially, these appear on the day of award — months before the same award surfaces in FPDS under the 90-day defense delay.

Once you have identified a recompete, the clock matters more than the research. Our piece on why small businesses lose federal contracts before they submit a bid explains how short the actual response window is once a solicitation posts.

Researching the company once you have a name

• SAM.gov Entity Information at sam.gov/entity-information — registration details, exclusions, and responsibility and qualification data. Entities that opted out of public search are visible only to signed-in federal users; sensitive and FOUO entity information needs a federal CAC/PIV card and a role.
• CAGE code search at cage.dla.mil/Search — still live and separate from SAM.gov as a search tool, though CAGE codes are actually assigned through SAM.gov entity registration. Use it for lookup and inquiry; use SAM.gov for full entity records.
• For foreign incumbents, the USAspending Recipient Details panel gives you the registered address, which is often enough to work out whether you are looking at a global operator or a local agent.

Step 7: Where Does Publicly Available Federal Contract Pricing Actually Live?

Some federal contract pricing is public and some is protected. Think of it in four tiers, easiest first.

Tier 1 — Contract values (free, immediate)

USAspending gives you obligated, current, potential and outlayed values on every award, plus the full modification history. This is total contract value rather than unit pricing, but it establishes the size of the prize and the escalation pattern across option years.

Tier 2 — Solicitation attachments (free, and better than most people realize)

Under FAR 5.102, the contracting officer “must make available through the GPE solicitations synopsized through the GPE, including specifications, technical data, and other pertinent information determined necessary by the contracting officer.” The GPE — the governmentwide point of entry, defined at FAR 2.101 — is SAM.gov. In practice, that means the blank pricing instrument is usually public: the Schedule of Rates, the bid schedule, the CLIN structure, Section B, the estimated quantities. (FAR 5.102(a)(5) carves out national-security and similar exceptions, so “must” is not absolute, and some attachments sit behind the Access column’s restricted marking.)

An empty rate sheet may sound useless. It is not. It tells you every line the government will pay on — per-ton rates, per-container rates, gang-hour rates, overtime differentials, minimum guarantees — plus the estimated quantities behind them. That is the entire shape of the bid.

Tier 3 — GAO protest decisions (free, occasionally exact)

Protest decisions sometimes publish competitors’ actual evaluated prices, side by side. If your niche has any protest history at all, search it.

Tier 4 — FOIA (slow, partial, sometimes worth it)

Start at FOIA.gov to identify the right agency — there are over 100, and each handles its own requests. The agency search tool is the fastest way to find the right one. Many DoD components use a FOIAXpress Public Access Link; the Washington Headquarters Services PAL at pal.whs.mil covers OSD, the Joint Staff and several components including DLA, whose FOIA page points there. Others run their own — the Air Force and the Defense Health Agency, for instance.

Understand the law before you invest the time.

FAR 24.202(a) states that “a proposal in the possession or control of the Government, submitted in response to a competitive solicitation, shall not be made available to any person under the Freedom of Information Act.” But the very next sentence is the opening: “This prohibition does not apply to a proposal, or any part of a proposal, that is set forth or incorporated by reference in a contract.” On rate-type services contracts, the winning price schedule usually is incorporated into the contract. That moves it out of the absolute bar and into a case-by-case Exemption 4 analysis, which is why redacted contracts released under FOIA sometimes do carry visible rate tables.

FOIA Exemption 4 protects confidential commercial information, and it got broader in 2019. In Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media, 588 U.S. 427 (2019), the Supreme Court held that “where commercial or financial information is both customarily and actually treated as private by its owner and provided to the government under an assurance of privacy, the information is ‘confidential’ within Exemption 4’s meaning.” The Justice Department’s Office of Information Policy has since instructed that “agencies should no longer apply the ‘substantial competitive harm’ test from National Parks.” In short: withholding pricing is easier for agencies now than it was before 2019.

Expect months, not weeks. Under 32 CFR 286.10, a DoD component “shall promptly provide written notice to the submitter of confidential commercial information whenever records containing such information are requested,” and must give that submitter a reasonable period to object. That submitter-notice step, not the queue, is what makes contract-pricing FOIAs slow.

A faster alternative if you bid and lose

Request a debriefing. Under FAR 15.506, a postaward debriefing must include “the overall evaluated cost or price (including unit prices) and technical rating, if applicable, of the successful offeror and the debriefed offeror” — note that the unit-price requirement covers the awardee as well as you. It will not include point-by-point comparisons, trade secrets, or “cost breakdowns, profit, indirect cost rates, and similar information.”

DoD’s deviation also adds something worth asking for: source selection decision documents are disclosed in redacted form for awards over $150 million, and are available on request for awards between $15 million and $150 million made to small businesses or nontraditional defense contractors.

What you generally will not get

Awarded unit-level pricing taken from a competitor’s proposal, cost breakdowns, profit margins and indirect rates are protected. If a source promises you those routinely, be skeptical.

What Does the Repeatable Workflow Look Like?

Once your codes are set, the whole exercise looks like this.

1. Pull your NAICS and PSC pair off one known-good record.
2. In SAM.gov Contract Opportunities, filter by those codes, check Status → Inactive, and set a multi-year date range. Save the search.
3. Open the closed notices and download the attachments — PWS, Schedule of Rates, Q&A, amendments — while they are still posted.
4. In USAspending Advanced Search, run the same codes plus agency and place of performance. Note every Period Of Performance end date.
5. Open the base IDV for each and read its Orders Made Under this IDV table and its Transaction History.
6. Take the Solicitation ID from Competition Details back to SAM.gov to close the loop.
7. Sign in to SAM.gov Contract Awards and run a wildcard PIID search on the contracting office prefix, filtered to your PSC. Then build an Ad Hoc report in the Data Bank for the years you care about. That report, not a pile of screenshots, is your historical database.
8. Search GAO bid protest decisions for your PSC, your agency and the incumbents you have identified.
9. Set a calendar reminder for 12 to 18 months before each period of performance ends. That is when the sources sought notice posts.

If you would rather not maintain the reminder list by hand, a saved search that runs daily against your codes will surface the sources you're looking for when they publish.

Quick Reference: Which System for Which Job?

Treasury also publishes the Federal Spending Guide, a plain-language question-and-answer reference on how the data works.

All sources in this guide are official U.S. government systems, verified against the live interfaces in September 2026. Government sites change. If a filter name or menu path has moved since publication, the underlying record is almost always still there under a slightly different label.